


insufferable creatures

by potted_music



Category: The Terror (TV 2018), The Terror - Dan Simmons
Genre: F/F, a pwp except without much porn either, warning for the Platypus Pond scene
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-19
Updated: 2018-08-19
Packaged: 2019-06-29 19:50:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15736209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/potted_music/pseuds/potted_music
Summary: "So, your point is that marriage is for those who cannot discuss prison reform?"(a silly pwp, or whatever's the word for a pwp without much porn, that started out from the premise that the only way to explain Sophia's seriously weird sex talk during the Platypus Pond scene is to assume that she's desperately if inexpertly trying to feign attraction to Crozier while feeling none of it. Let's assume she's infatuated with Jane instead, and is consciously trying to ruin her reputation to avoid being married off.The Platypus Pond scene monologues are lifted from the novel, with gratitude to Dan Simmons for the weirdness.)





	insufferable creatures

**Author's Note:**

> Things that are kinda sorta factual: Jane being a friend of John Franklin's first wife, Eleanor; John disapproving of Eleanor's literary pursuits, insofar as they were not limited to helping him pen his memoirs; Jane weaponizing an image of feminine propriety to create herself a space for pursuits that didn't necessarily align with conventions; Jane not caring one whit about prison reform. Otherwise, for the purposes of this fic at least, I cannot say that I care about historic authenticity any more than Jane cared about prison reform.

Her subterfuge was perfect in every way, almost Machiavellian in its deviousness, if she said so herself, except for one small detail that had somehow escaped her mind until the moment she stood on the grass in her birthday suit, and realized that she had not the slightest idea how to proceed from there.

Ravishing an officer seemed so very simple in theory. She never considered how much polite conversation was to be involved in this straightforward endeavour.

Thoughts race frantically in her mind. What would another woman say under the circumstances, the one who looked at a flat hairy chest and a masculine visage with dreamy longing?

Moments tick by, her prey still hiding in the bushes, with barely a glimpse of pale flesh signifying that he has not yet fled to Hobart. It’s now or never, Sophia thinks, grits her teeth decisively, and says, “If the male platypus emerges with his venomous spur, you can protect me. Shall we inspect the burrow entrance?”

Fortunately, that does the trick and goads the poor wretch out of his arboreal hiding place. As Crozier pads awkwardly towards the water, she wonders at his bobbing male member. How can men expect to be taken seriously when they walk around with this ridiculous protrusion? Moreover, how can they expect to be taken seriously if they find that level of conversation inspiring?

Crossing the watery distance between them, she finds herself rambling despite her earlier resolve. “The nesting burrow is dug out by the female for the actual breeding, and after that deed is performed, she excavates another small chamber to act as a nursery.”

Crozier stares into space with a vapid gaze, as if his mind were miles away. If he persists in his failure to hold up his end of the conversation, she must; nothing could stop the stream of words escaping her lips, she suspects, unfamiliar hysteria creeping into her voice.

“Aunt Jane, who is something of a naturalist herself, believes that the venomous spurs on the hind legs of the male are used not only to fight other male platypuses and intruders, but to hang on to the female while they are swimming and mating at the same time.”

Of course, Jane would never discuss anything so crass, but needs must, and she needn’t find out about this in any case, except maybe as an amusing anecdote in the future Sophia can barely imagine but will do everything to bring about, in which they are the most devoted of companions in life, and in travels, and in bed.

She closes her eyes as she grinds down hard against Crozier’s leg, imagining a different thigh between hers, thinking of gentler hands on her back, a smoother cheek pressed against hers, softer curves against her chest. This, the part that does not involve too much burrowing and prodding, is not that different from what she might do under different circumstances, with a different partner, and she likes what she likes. She shifts her hips, rutting frenziedly against the firm thigh and imagining frilly petticoats foaming around them. There will come a time when she would make Jane’s breath hitch like that, her body betraying her to pleasure; and for now, she’ll eliminate the obstacles between them.

Men cannot be trusted to keep a secret, she knows, for they are too boastful and too eager to compete with one another, even in areas that do not lend themselves naturally to competition. Crozier will talk, she knows, and, with any luck, that’s the dreary marriage business put paid to.

*

A hunting party, that is how they first meet. Uncle John’s friends descended on the house, an amiable, laughter-soaked, distant bunch trampling through groves and grasses. Auntie Eleanor invited a friend to keep her company while the men were out hunting: a friend from her literary days no less, from her life before Uncle John, mentioned only in hushed tones for fear of his disapproval.

And that is how Sophia ended up dragging across the golden, sun-swept gardens and rooms, made more golden and sun-swept with the patina of memory, she has no doubt, after Jane, helpless against the yearning rising in her chest, even if she herself was not aware of its precise parameters at the time. That is how, too, she ended up seeing Jane with Eleanor.

She sneaked after them into a quiet library to steal another moment of Jane’s attention under some pretence. She probably wanted to suggest that they discuss a book she had recently read, she thinks, but is no longer sure. She freezes on the threshold instead, the empty afternoon house hushed around her like a giant theatre, the audience holding in their breath; and behind the shelves, seen in glimpses between books that contained not a hint at anything of the kind, Auntie Eleanor with her skirt hitched up (the flash of a naked knee through the lacy trimmings of her bloomers), biting her knuckles to still any noise she might make, her locks stuck to her sweat-slicked brow.

Jane kneeling in front of her.

Sophia doesn’t dare to breathe or blink, pieces falling into place, everything becoming painfully clear. It’s the moment when a card game ends, the perfect hand revealed to devastated opponents; Jane’s perfect hand, no longer glove-clad, glistens in the sunlight, slick with Eleanor’s wetness.

Poor forgotten dead Eleanor, whose face Sophia only remembers as a watercolour miniature; she doesn’t remember Jane’s face from those days either, transposing the face she presents to the world now, more placid, the hunger and curiosity carefully hidden. Nevertheless, Sophia cannot quite reconcile that slightly exotic, faintly dangerous creature bringing the wind of foreign places and tales of European travel to their somnolent house, all those years previously, with the suffocating propriety she’s been trying to claw through in a more recent time.

"You are not a little girl you would like to believe you are,” Jane says, her voice steely with rage, after Sophia blithely explains what she had done at the Platypus Pond. “Not that that would be palatable, unless you were growing up in the kind of quarters we do not mention, nevermind frequent. Just- more understandable, I suppose."

“Did that ever stop you, while it was your feelings at stake? I saw you with Eleanor, you know. And I’ve already said that I also see you looking at me, when you think I wouldn’t notice. So how am I different?” 

She has been repeating this conversation, or variations on it, with the insistence of a desperate mendicant at the court of a benevolent monarch, but this is the first time she sees Jane’s eyes blown wide with fear. “I saw what I saw,” she repeats stubbornly. "Do you feel the same thing with him?"

“Don’t you dare bring John into this.” Jane stands up and briskly walks over to the window. Without looking back at Sophia, she says, "I don’t understand your insistence on flouting propriety. Being married is a good life. One would never be able to travel half as much, or be listened to half as attentively, without it."

"Don't you wish it were different?" Sophia asks, trailing after her out of long habit.

"I'm not squandering my life on wishing,” Jane says, irritation returning to her voice. “Weigh an itch against a good life, and see for yourself."

Sophia hardly manages to stifle a laugh. "You, Jane, are anything but an itch."

“You are hopelessly naïve if you don’t see that marriage is a small price to pay for freedom, and for friendship, and for camaraderie with other women that comes of discussing shared experience, like disinviting bothersome guests, or renting chandeliers for a ball."

Sophia does see the safety and comfort born of not wanting the things that one isn’t supposed to want, or wanting them only surreptitiously; but she doesn’t come of the family that ever valued safety much. Instead, she presses on,

"So, your point is that marriage is for those who cannot discuss prison reform?"

"You cannot subsist on prison reform alone."

Indeed, Jane couldn’t, of that Sophia’s sure, for Jane, in the years she had not seen much of her, has learned not to care about the world beyond the tightly circumscribed boundaries within which she has fashioned herself a modest freedom. In a moment of clarity, Sophia suddenly wonders whether the Jane she remembers was ever real at all, or just shadow play woven of her own wishes and dreams. Not that it should change anything, for she has wishes enough for both of them.

"I can certainly try."

Other things she can try: close the distance between them, and hastily draw the heavy curtains over the window overlooking the garden, and cover Jane’s lips with hers. And try it she does. She almost expects a slap, which doesn’t come.

“You know what is curious?” she says, drawing back for a second, only to grab Jane’s skirt. “In all your protestations, of which I’ve heard many, you have never said that this prospect isn’t tempting. Not even once.” 

"You are the most odd-" — Jane spits as Sophia fumbles, trying to reach the opening of her drawers, — "-misshapen-" — Sophia had often imagined leisurely afternoons in which she would have the time to look and explore, but this is not it, she needs this to be fast, so she focuses on the small knob, — "-insufferable-" — and rubs, without a moment's reprieve, — “-creature-”— with an insistence that she knows would be almost unbearable, just this side of too intense; "-I ever had the misfortune of-" she is rewarded with a soft "ah" against the side of her neck, and then conversation stops altogether. Sophia takes that as a good sign.

She doesn’t bother hiding a triumphant smile stretching her lips. Some other time, she promises herself, it would be about pleasure; this—kicking Jane’s legs further apart, her other hand straying into the unseen reaches hidden by the waves of rustling fabric of her skirts and drawers—is about getting the upper hand. Jane is slick under her fingers, then around them.

“Breathe,” Sophia whispers, before contradicting herself and kissing her breath away.

Jane doesn’t make a sound, her eyes drifting closed against the stifling half-darkness of the room.

“Look at me,” Sophia begs, and when she gulps for breath, she can taste Jane on the air, her secret musky smell. “Look-”

Jane’s palm drifts, as if in a daze, along the upper line of Sophia’s corset, where flesh curves over stiff cotton. Jane has never reached out to touch her before, not even on the rocking ship during their passage to Australia, not even for any other perfectly innocuous reason, miserly with her company and her affections, locking her desires away so far she herself forgot that they were there. The movements of Sophia’s fingers grow more frantic, quite against her will.

There’s wonder in Jane’s eyes when she trembles against Sophia and grabs her shoulders for purchase, firm enough to leave marks; and then it all dims before flush in her cheeks manages to subside.

Still out of breath, still quivering, Jane retreats from the choice behind the shield of passive voice. “You will be expected, of course, to go back to living with your family once we return to England.”


End file.
